There’s a Big Change Coming to the Liquor Aisle

There’s a Big Change Coming to the Liquor Aisle

Next time you’re holding a bottle of beer, give it a good look over. Notice anything missing that you typically see on drinks? That's right: Brewskies don’t have a nutrition label. But soon we’ll be able to know how many calories and carbs are in a bottle of Guinness.

The stout’s parent company, Diageo, announced it will be adding nutrition labels to all of its alcohol in the coming months. This is big news given that Diageo is the world’s largest producer of spirits, including Smirnoff, Cîroc, Tanqueray, Johnnie Walker, Seagram’s Seven Crown, and Captain Morgan—or basically the contents of our fridge in college.

Diageo is voluntarily adding the calorie counts because it knows “consumers are increasingly discerning about what’s in their glass,” Ivan Menezes, the company’s CEO, said in a press release. They're still determining what the portion size will be, but the company has signaled that it wants to be in line with how people usually drink: by the glass.

It might seem crazy that alcohol producers aren’t required to include nutrition information when even bottled water has to come with one. In the U.S. the reasoning comes down to some bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, but basically booze is regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which doesn’t require nutrition labels like the FDA does.